The role of climate and out-of-Africa migration in the frequencies of risk alleles for 21 human diseases.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Demography and environmental adaptation can affect the global distribution of genetic variants and possibly the distribution of disease. Population heterozygosity of single nucleotide polymorphisms has been shown to decrease strongly with distance from Africa and this has been attributed to the effect of serial founding events during the migration of humans out of Africa. Additionally, population allele frequencies have been shown to change due to environmental adaptation. Here, we investigate the relationship of Out-of-Africa migration and climatic variables to the distribution of risk alleles for 21 diseases.

Results

For each disease, we computed the regression of average heterozygosity and average allele frequency of the risk alleles with distance from Africa a

SUBMITTER: Blair LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4501093 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature